Analysis and design of a telerobotic system with haptic behavior

A control scheme for a "master-slave" telerobotic dynamic system with haptic behavior is derived. The telerobotic system consists of a "master" robot, operated by a human arm, and a kinematically identical "slave" robot, located at a remote site. When the operator moves the handle of the "master" back and forth, the remote "slave" mimics the motion in a constrained or unconstrained environment. The disturbance and reaction forces from the environment and the loads are fed back to the handle of the "master" and felt by the human operator. This way, the operator gets a feel of what is "out there" without being "there". The advantage of the control scheme presented in this paper is the integration of the dynamics of the human arm, actuators, and the environment in the closed-loop control system for stability analysis. It was shown that the experimental and the theoretical results are in good agreement and that the designed controller is robust to constrained/unconstrained environment and load disturbances.